"Giorgione is regarded as a unique figure in the history of art: almost no other Western painter has left so few secure works and enjoyed such fame..." Sylvia Ferino-Pagden.

My website, MyGiorgione, now includes my interpretations of Giorgione's "Tempest" as "The Rest on the Flight into Egypt"; his "Three Ages of Man" as "The Encounter of Jesus with the Rich Young Man"; Titian's, "Sacred and Profane Love" as "The Conversion of Mary Magdalen"; and Titian's "Pastoral Concert" as his "Homage to Giorgione".

Tuesday, December 24, 2013

"In 1971, an incredible 1.2 billion
copies of a single postage stamp were printed by the U.S. Postal Service. It
was the largest stamp printing order in the world since postage stamps were
first introduced in 1840. It was almost ten times larger that the usual
printing of an American commemorative stamp. The stamp was one of two Christmas
stamps issued that year. It depicted a Nativity scene by the Italian painter
Giorgio Giorgione, Adoration of the Shepherds, and portrayed Mary, Joseph, the
Christ Child, and two shepherds."*

The Postal Service probably picked
Giorgione’s “Adoration of the Shepherds” because it was one of the most prized
possessions of Washington's National Gallery. The scene is so familiar that it is easy
to overlook its real meaning. Over a year ago I discussed the meaning of the painting to Giorgione's Venetian contemporaries but on another level it has a universal meaning.

This King is not protected by
armed guards. There is no need to bribe or otherwise court influence with
bureaucrats acting as intermediaries. Anyone, even the simplest and the
humblest, can approach this King directly and in his or her own fashion.

Saturday, December 14, 2013

On a recent trip to the Los
Angeles area to visit one of my daughters I had an opportunity to visit the
famed Norton Simon Museum in nearby Pasadena. The information brochure for the
Museum indicated that in the twentieth century Norton Simon, a wealthy
industrialist, accumulated “a renowned collection of Old Masters,
Impressionists, Modern art, and masterpieces from India and Southeast Asia.”
Simon’s collection found a home in Pasadena in 1974 when he and a new Board of
Trustees took control of the former Pasadena Art Museum.

Despite the breadth of the
collection and the beautiful grounds, I must confess that I went there to see a
small painting that the Museum still attributes to Giorgione even though the
label indicates that many scholars today give it to Titian.

The Museum calls the painting,
“Head of a Venetian Girl” although it is more than a head. In his study of the
early Titian Paul Joannides called it a “Bust of a Young Woman” but added
“Courtesan” in parenthesis. He claimed that it was certainly by Titian and dated it around 1510. The painting is only 31.7 x 24.1 cm in size. It is
so small that Joannides believed that it might be a fragment of a larger
narrative. Nevertheless, the Museum has done a superlative job of hanging the
painting. It is featured by itself behind glass in an entranceway to a large
gallery. On the other side of the entrance is a small portrait by Giovanni
Bellini of Joerg Fugger.

You can see why it might be called
a courtesan because no respectable Venetian woman would have sat for a portrait
in such a disheveled state. Joannides said that it brought to mind a Mary
Magdalen but he quickly dismissed the idea. In an earlier post I have argued
that his initial intuition was correct. I believe that this early Titian was
one of the first of many versions of Mary Magdalen that he did during his long
career.

Titian and other contemporaries
liked to portray a beautiful Magdalen in a state of partial undress. They
depicted her in the process of discarding her worldly finery after her
conversion experience. It is not just the similarity to other paintings that
would lead one to consider this woman as Mary Magdalen. There are certainly
elements in the painting that suggest the great female saint.

Titian used her multi-colored
striped shawl in a later, unmistakable depiction (Naples) of the penitent saint. It is
true that there is no sign of her jar of ointment in the Norton Simon woman but standing in front of the
painting I wondered why Titian had chosen to make this woman a redhead. Italian
ladies today like red hair and some did try to bleach their hair during the
sixteenth century but red hair seems to be mainly a characteristic of Mary
Magdalen. Earlier Giovanni Bellini had depicted a striking red haired Magdalen
without the ointment jar standing to one side of the Madonna and Child.

Moreover, as I was looking at the
painting a security guard came over and cautioned me not to stand too
close.He turned out to be a
graduate student and we discussed the painting. When I mentioned Mary Magdalen,
he asked about the ring on her finger. It’s amazing how you can look at a
painting so many times and still not see some details. I had never noticed the
ring before but there it was on her left index finger. What is its
significance? Is the ring one of her courtesan’s jewels or does it symbolize a
bride of Christ? It is on the index and not the traditional wedding ring
finger. Did women during this time wear their wedding bands on the index
finger? In a version of the Mystic Marriage of St. Catherine Paris Bordone
directs Catherine’s hand to the infant Jesus who holds a ring in his hand. Her
index finger is pointed to receive it.

Some might say that it makes no
difference if a painting is an unknown woman, a courtesan, or Mary Magdalen. On
the flight home from California I read an essay by famed Art historian Erwin
Panofsky in a collection of his writings entitled, “Meaning in the Visual
Arts.” In the essay on Titian’s “allegory of Prudence,” Panofsky wrote:

In a work of art, “form” cannot be
divorced from “content”; the distribution of color and lines, light and shade,
volumes and planes, however delightful as a visual spectacle, must also be
understood as carrying a more-than-visual meaning.

Art history is not the same thing
as art appreciation. I believe the role of the art historian is to view the
work of art as a window into the world of the past: to see things as the
artist, his patron, and his contemporary viewers might have seen them. The
paintings of Bellini, Giorgione and Titian are important primary sources for
our understanding of the real nature of the Venetian Renaissance.